Once and for All(59)

“How did you know it was William?” I asked.

“You did say he was the alarm code at the house,” he told me. I had, while telling a story about how this was the way I learned to spell his name as a kid. William was our password for everything. “I took a guess.”

“Well,” I said, still working through all this. I’d had to stop walking just to catch up, so to speak. “Now you know all my secrets.”

“Don’t worry. They’re safe with me.”

I turned, looking out over the balcony to the street below. Somewhere, a red car was driving steadily away from me, putting a mile, then another mile between us.

“What am I supposed to tell people when they ask me why I have a Lexi Navigator ringtone?” I asked him now.

“That you are her biggest fan because your boyfriend loves her,” he replied. Boyfriend. I liked the sound of that. “And then you show them your screensaver.”

“My—” I pulled my phone down, flipping to that setting. Sure enough, there was Ethan grinning next to Lexi Navigator in her stage outfit. I put it back to my ear. “Okay. That’s pretty cute.”

“I’m glad you think so. As we were driving off I started to worry that maybe you would hate it. Hold on a sec.” I heard a voice in the background, then Ethan saying something. “Look, we’re stopping for gas and snacks. I’ll call back in a bit, okay? You’ll know me by ‘Pay Attention, the Words Are Changing.’”

“What?”

“The name of the song about her grandmother, Lulu. Come on! How are you going to date Lexi Navigator’s number one fan if you don’t know her biggest hits?”

I smiled, turning back to my room. “I’ll get right on that.”

“You can start with your Tunage library, under Recently Purchased. Talk to you in a few!”

With that he was gone, leaving me to just stare, open mouthed, as I went to my music app to find, yes, five new songs, all by Lexi Navigator. I’d listen to them all, over and over again, in between the dozens of short conversations we’d have in the following hours as we each headed back to our respective homes. With Ethan in my ear, the drive back to Lakeview felt, and looked, entirely different. I felt like a different girl. I would never again be who I was when I walked down those beach stairs, took off my shoes, and stepped into the sand. And I was so, so glad.

Once home, we talked constantly, and when we weren’t talking, we were texting or chatting face-to-face on HiThere! He’d linked the S.O. (significant other) part of his Ume.com page to my profile right after our first phone conversation, at the same time I was adding his to my own. Despite my having dated a few guys already, it wasn’t until Ethan that I understood what all the love songs and sappy movie endings really were all about. I finally understood Jilly’s buoyant romanticism, the hopefulness that seeps into every part of your life when you know someone loves you in that way. I ate, slept, and dreamed Ethan. When he wasn’t in my ear or on my screen in one way or another, I was running over our night together in my mind, hour by hour, so I’d be sure not to forget a single detail.

As we’d promised, we immediately began to make plans to get together again. His dad, still eager to get on Ethan’s good side post-divorce, said he’d buy him a ticket down for his fall break, which was in mid-October, overlapping by a few days with mine. I circled the days on my desk calendar and began a countdown on my phone, getting teased regularly by my mom, William, and Jilly about my visible impatience with how slowly time was passing.

“I have never seen you like this,” Jilly said to me, staring as I hummed along to Lexi Navigator on the car radio as we drove to school the first day of senior year. “It’s like you’ve been body swapped or something.”

“What?” I said. “You’ve been in love tons of times.”

“Not like that. This, what’s going on here?” She swirled her finger at me. “It’s some serious first love stuff. Sometimes I look over at you and you’re just sitting there, smiling at nothing.”

“I am not.”

“You are. And I’m jealous.” She sighed, checking her reflection in the visor mirror. “I want an Ethan, too.”

I couldn’t blame her. To me, he was perfect: this gorgeous, funny, smart boy who thought I, Lulu, hung the moon as well. It was like my life had been silent in a way before, and now there was a soundtrack, the very best music playing along in the background at every moment. You didn’t miss it when it wasn’t there. You didn’t know to. But once it was, nothing ever sounded the same again.

“Tell me where you are now,” I’d say to Ethan when we talked before school, and then at lunch, and after last period, and several more times up until bed, when he was the last voice I heard before going to sleep.

“Walking across the quad to practice, stuffing my face with a bag of Cheese-pops,” he said. “Where are you?”

“Heading to the coffee shop for afternoon caffeine for Mom and William.”

“Double shot for her, or no?”

“Just the one. She already sounded like she was buzzing.”

He just knew me so well, already. Mostly because we talked so much, but there was something else, as well. The time we’d been together had been so short and yet so intense that everything was sped up, like the difference between dog and people years. I already felt like I’d known him forever. This was what love was. I knew it now. And it changed everything.